Kiev must resolve the Volyn massacre issue to get Warsaw’s support for its EU accession bid, Polish PM Donald Tusk says
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has stated that he will block Ukraine’s bid to join the European Union unless Ukraine addresses Warsaw’s concerns regarding the Volyn massacre, a mass killing of Poles by Ukrainian nationalists during World War II.
Tusk’s statement comes in the wake of a political scandal that erupted in Poland following a visit by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, who made controversial remarks about the history of Poland and Ukraine.
“Ukrainians, with all our respect and our support for their military effort, must realize that joining the EU is also joining a political and historical culture. So, until there is respect for these standards on the part of Ukraine, Ukraine will not become a member of the European family,” Tusk said.
The Polish Prime Minister condemned Kuleba’s statements, describing his assessment of the remarks as “unequivocally negative.” “Ukraine, one way or another, will have to meet Poland’s expectations,” Tusk emphasized.
Kuleba made his controversial remarks on Wednesday while speaking in the northern Polish city of Olsztyn. While promising not to oppose exhumations to help understand the Volyn massacre, Kuleba urged the two nations to “leave history to historians” and not to dig up “the bad things that the Poles did to Ukrainians and Ukrainians to Poles.”
Between 1943 and 1944, at least 60,000 ethnic Poles were killed in the historical regions of Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, which are now part of Ukraine, by militants belonging to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Some historians estimate that the number of victims could be as high as 120,000. While Poland has recognized the massacre as a genocide of Poles, modern Ukraine has celebrated the perpetrators as “freedom fighters” and “national heroes.”
Kuleba also brought up the 1947 Operation Vistula, a forced resettlement of Ukrainians from southeastern Poland to the west of the country. This controversial action was designed to eliminate UPA holdouts by depriving them of local support. During the operation, approximately 140,000 people were deported and dispersed throughout western Poland.
The visiting foreign minister asserted that Kiev has its own demands of Polish authorities, including respecting the “memory of Ukrainians” who had been forcibly expelled from Ukrainian territories. This remark was poorly received in Poland, as some interpreted it as a veiled threat of territorial claims. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry responded by clarifying that Kuleba was not implying territorial demands but was merely referring to the region where a “compact Ukrainian community” had lived before the deportation as “Ukrainian territory.”